Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The One True Church – Part II

See an earlier post for my discussion about the Roman Catholic (RC) Church’s position of it being the only true Christian church, with all others something less than fully Christian. This claim is based mostly on allegiance to the Pope. In that post I discussed one of the two recent events that I found highly offensive and insulting.

I might also point out that I’m not criticizing the RC Church’s belief that its ways of viewing Christianity and its practices are better than any other. Everybody believes their religion, belief system, worldview, and/or lifestyle is the best way – otherwise they would not follow it. What I’m criticizing is the RC’s arrogant attitude in that it claims to be the only “true” Christian Church, and all others are something inferior. That is elevating yourself by putting down others, something I find unchristian at best and hateful at worst. In fact the RC Church’s less than stellar history and its many doctrines that are contrary to Holy Scripture seriously throw into question its claims of superiority.

The second event that offended me springs from this RC claim of superiority described in my earlier post. About a month ago, I read in the Poughkeepsie Journal that the Bishop of Baltimore punished a priest for a number of transgressions, one of which was conducting a funeral service jointly with (horrors!) a Protestant clergyperson. I presume the Bishop considered this joint service to be syncretism. If so, that is an insult and highly offensive to those of us who put our allegiance to Jesus Christ above any early powers or principalities. To consider a joint funeral with another Christian to be syncretism is beyond ridiculous.

These two items I cited in these two posts appeared in the Poughkeepsie Journal a month or more ago. I was infuriated when I read them, but agonized for weeks over whether I should write anything about them in this blog. I finally decided that a blog is used for personal opinions, so I decided to write these last two posts. Please note I am not criticizing individual Roman Catholics, but the Pope’s recent statement and the Church’s official positions on these matters.

Now that I’m on a roll, a future post will deal with how I believe the RC Church has promulgated doctrines that are not biblical, which I alluded to above. I will be writing that post to point out that there are serious flaws within the RC Church when it comes to doctrine, so it is especially foolish for the Church hierarchy to claim superiority over other Christian Churches.